Pedestrians walk past an art installation showing an unexploded bomb, set near the Taras Shevchenko monument in the center of the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, close to Poland's border on July 31, 2014. Through the installation, the Lviv-based NGO Varta-1 aims at raising residents' awareness about the current conflict taking place in the country, some 1200 kilometers away far east, and collecting funds, equipment and medicine for Ukraine's Army soldiers needs. AFP PHOTO/ YURKO DYACHYSHYNYURKO DYACHYSHYN/AFP/Getty Images

Kazimierz Mikos ran down a Warsaw street, zig-zagging to avoid the bullets that whizzed past him. As the 14-year-old ran for his life, he was struck with terror at the sight of a dead body in the street. Even after the scrape with death, the teen volunteered for a heroic Polish struggle against the Nazis - becoming a messenger and a guard.

On Friday, Mikos will be among a shrinking group of insurgents to be honored in state ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the start of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. In this uneven struggle, poorly armed young city residents rose up against the German forces that had brutally occupied Poland for five years, battling them in the streets of the capital for over two months.

Mikos, now 84, still vividly recalls the white-and-red Polish flags that appeared in windows on the day the revolt began, a patriotic sign of support for the fighters that inspired him to join them.

"People waited for this moment for five long years," Mikos said, tears welling as he shared his story with a reporter. "They believed they would be free now, they were enthusiastic."

The hopes ended tragically.

The insurgents were no match for the Nazis, who turned their professional army and superior weaponry on the Poles, killing 200,000 fighters and civilians and razing the city in revenge. The revolt also failed in its goal of reversing Allied political calculations that put Poland under Soviet domination for decades after World War II.

Today the uprising is remembered by Poles as one of the most important moments in a long history of independence struggles, often against Russia. The courage of the fighters remains a defining memory in the Polish image of itself as a nation willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. It is also a reminder of Poland's sense of a precarious security, sandwiched between Germany and Russia - a vulnerability revived now by the armed conflict nearby in Ukraine.

The brutality and the devastating power of that struggle, Mikos said, "surpassed the imagination of ... anyone who knows about armies and fighting."